


Dreamnesia

by depressykessy



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depressykessy/pseuds/depressykessy
Summary: Adora's dreams are different to the other cadets, and she never remembers what they are. All she knows is that she will always wake up crying.Except one night, for a fleeting moment, she remembers.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Dreamnesia

Her eyes shot open, to meet the nothingness above her. The adjustment came slowly, but it came anyway. Even if she didn’t want it to, she was waking up, far too early.

She was awake, but it didn’t feel that way. She peered around the barracks with her eyes, not daring to move her head. She made a note of everything around her, the beds, the walls, the dim lighting. She listened closely to the sounds, the ventilation, the snoring, the rustling. She built an image of the space around her inside her mind, a plant growing from a bed of sleep, it grew until it was familiar, until she could place herself in the room and peace washed over her. She was in the barracks, in her bed. She was safe, but wasn't comfortable.

She could feel the figure asleep at her feet. Catra. Now she was comfortable.

It wasn’t the right time to be awake, she knew that. Learning to discipline her sleeping was hard, and although she enjoyed sneaking out with Catra at night, it was important for a soldier to be disciplined. Still, she felt she had learned more from those late night excursions than she ever would from her dreams. She sighed and closed her eyes, descending into a deep thought.

Her dreams…

She knew her dreams were powerful. Her dreams were different, they always made her cry, and Catra always teased her for it. And although they were powerful, that didn’t stop them from being fleeting. Unmemorable. Forgotten every morning.

Except now. She remembered. Where she goes when she sleeps, what place takes her safety away from her. An empty space pretending to be a room full of voices. Full of pain, fear, and urgency. Power. It was power.

There were hundreds of voices. Oh god, hundreds and hundreds of voices.

They shouted what sounded like orders, but they weren’t soldiers. Were they? Perhaps they were just a different type of soldier. Dream soldiers. Most had no names, no figures, no presence except a voice. Though they couldn’t be seen, they were surrounding her in circles. Concentric circles radiating outwards from the centre, and in the centre she stood. Asleep and dreaming.

“Xifo xjmm tif sfbmjtf? Xifo xjmm tif bxblfo up uif sfbmjuz pg ifs qvsqptf?”

The words made no sense. Like she had stayed up too late, and the instructor's voice in the morning had stopped being words and devolved into meaningless sounds. Scarily, Adora had understood them perfectly.

“When will she realise? When will she awaken to the reality of her purpose?”

Adora had spoken without thinking, “Tif jt opu zpvs qvqqfu, opu b uppm gps zpv up gvsuifs zpvs hpbmt!”

She had said something, in a language she couldn’t understand, but could. Wait, was it her? Adora questioned herself. A look of confusion would have spread across her face, if she was awake enough to feel it. She had said it, but it had felt otherworldly, ethereal in a way beyond description. She had spoken it, but her lips had never moved, the thought had never formed before the action.

“J xjmm opu mfu zpv usfbu ifs uif xbz zpv usfbufe nf”

“I will not let you treat her the way you treated me”

It took her a minute to realise it was her again. Well, it felt like the words were hers, but not her. Someone else, but still her. It almost hurt to recall. The dream was quickly fading, and she was struggling to remember what had happened, what had come next.

A dream soldier had spoken, asked a question that made Adora feel angry for a reason she couldn’t explain.

“Xibu jg if ibt ifs bmsfbez? Xibu jg tif ofwfs csfblt gsff?”

“What if he has her already? What if she never breaks free?”

She didn’t know who they were talking about, but she cared more than she had expected, she cared more than it made sense for Adora to care.

Adora didn’t feel like herself, she was someone other than herself. Someone broken but powerful. Someone who wasn’t welcome here, but was here nonetheless.

She spoke again, “Ijt hsjq po Adora xjmm pof ebz gbjm, tif xjmm qjdl vq uif txpse boe efgz zpv bmm. Boe zpv xjmm tvggfs b gbuf zpv cspvhiu vqpo zpvstfmwft.”

She was talking about Adora, but right now, she wasn’t Adora. She felt herself slipping away, her thoughts becoming someone else's, and her psyche falling away into the darkness. She became the other. The broken. She felt the pain and the anger. She saw a life of prowess and promise, of rigid structure followed by defiance and hope. Her name is Mara, and Adora is distant. Far away, but also close to her. Adora is young, and Mara is old. But young as well, paradoxically naïve but with the experience of a thousand years. Apprehension became tenacity, and Adora had become Mara. Mara was here because she had to be, she had to protect Adora, to fight for what she believed in. They wanted to use Adora, to use her for her power, they were parasitic and insidious, and Mara refused to let them win.

She projected a powerful thought, one of warning, “His grip on Adora will one day fail, she will pick up the sword and defy you all. And you will suffer a fate you brought upon yourselves."

She had pushed too far, and this space was ending. Mara didn’t exist anymore, but she still did. Her existence was a paradox, she was lost and discovered every night, and every night she spoke her mind unto the first ones, and every night they expelled her again, but she always came back. The room had collapsed as if it never existed in the first place. The black was covered in millions of little white specks, Mara knew they were stars, but Adora would have never seen them. She loved to look at them, every time she was in this moment, she took in the beauty, the distance, the size and the splendour. She took it in like it was the last time she would ever see them, even though she had relived this moment a million times. It was always beautiful, and she was always sad when the green tendrils consumed it all. Mara saw the universe in its entirety, and she saw it all turn a sickly green that would make her stomach turn, if she still had a body. A pang of fear shuddered through her as she mustered all of her strength, and she became something of pure power, she became the planet, and she pulled herself away from it all. And the green became black once more. The stars went out.

Adora woke, but she was still dreaming. She remembered, every night she sees the same meeting, she sees the dream soldiers deliberating over her, she sees herself there, and she becomes the one called Mara. She becomes the broken and the strong, and she relives the end, sees the endless black and the little white specks, and every night she sees it all consumed by green, and she pulls them all away, pulls the planet to a dimension of safety and solitude, every night she feels the beauty and the pain. Every night she cries in her sleep and wonders why she never remembers in the morning.

Her eyes opened to a new day, a wakeup alarm blaring as she wiped the tears from her eyes, she didn’t know when she had fallen asleep again, but it didn’t matter now. Cursing herself, she has to work on her discipline.

As she stepped out of bed, she tried to remember the dream which had made her feel so broken.

And as always, she remembered nothing.


End file.
